


Mea Culpa

by Icarus5800



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Because that's all I seem capable of writing nowadays, Guilty Valjean, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmare, Post-Seine, Valjean's Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-03
Updated: 2013-04-10
Packaged: 2017-12-07 09:45:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/747088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icarus5800/pseuds/Icarus5800
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nightmare H/c fic.  Lots of Hurt, very little comfort.  Must be because it’s Javert doing the comforting.  Pssh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Je n'ai pas d'excuses. Pas de circonstances atténuantes. C'est la société divine qui m'a mis sur le plus mauvais côté de la plus mauvaise pente.

Javert is awoken by a tormented scream emerging from the room next to his. He regains full awareness in an instant, and grabs his cane in his left hand and his pistol in his right before charging into Jean Valjean’s bedchamber, prepared to deal with any eventuality. A million thoughts race through his head, none of them reassuring in the remotest degree. The chamber door is, as always, unlocked.

He thinks back to that old debate concerning the wisdom of keeping the front door bolted. He had firmly informed Valjean a secure house would not impair his saintliness. Valjean had protested that if burglars truly wished to rob him, the presence or absence of a lock makes little enough difference. When Cosette had resided here, the house had been bolted for her sake. But Valjean, being Valjean, has no such qualms about his own safety.

In the end, it was not the man’s logic but his stubbornness that secured Javert’s surrender. And it’s Valjean’s house to do with as he wished, after all. But when the former convict invited the inspector to share his home, Javert had accepted, perhaps a tad too readily. He told himself it was to ensure the man’s idiocy do not lead to his death. If there were reasons beyond that, Javert had neither wish nor will to contemplate them.

His eyes rapidly scan the defenseless room before him. To his surprise and some unacknowledged relief, Valjean is alone. The cause of his distress becomes apparent soon enough, as Javert himself has experienced it far too often for his comfort, these uncontrollable terrors of the night. There are demons that specialize in haunting dreams, capable of wreaking havoc in the minds of the most fearless and resolute of men, stripping them of stoic facade and dignity both. Somewhat ashamed of his overreaction yet still blaming it all on Valjean’s “open-door policy,” Javert sets his cane and pistol on a small table to the side of the room.

He finds that he is quite at a loss as to how to proceed. In all his long and eventful life, never has he been faced with a situation such as this, which calls for him to act in his capacity as a…friend, and not an immovable officer of the law. Once or twice, when he was still recovering from his little swim in the Seine, he had been plagued by such night-demons and awoke each time with his hand clasped in Valjean’s. He would rather avoid thinking about those occurrences when he can.

He makes an aborted attempt to approach the bed, some strange unfamiliar emotion making his heart clench to see those calm, benevolent features so twisted in pain and terror. It is a single word that stops him in his tracks.

“Mercy…”

~ * ~

Jean Valjean at this present moment bears little resemblance to himself.

That head of hair which at times may be mistaken for the halo of an angel is soaked with sweat, clinging limply to his scalp and face. His body arches off the bed as if to cast off some invisible oppressor, and is crushed back mercilessly. His hands flail out and grasps at nothing. He chokes on his own breath like a drowning man. Tears leak out of his tightly shut lids and dampen his pillow.

His expression is one of the greatest despair.

He is insensible to the world, existing only within whatever dark abyss of his soul sleep has opened. Lord knows that there are too many. Inspector Javert knows with a terrible certainty that he had been the cause of more than a few.

Javert can do nought but stand transfixed at the spectacle before him, uncertain of his place in this drama unfolding within another man’s mind. Perhaps he has no place here. He feels as if he is intruding on an intensely private moment, akin to eavesdropping at the confessional or listening in on a stranger’s prayers to God. But, for better or worse, he and the suffering man in the bed are not strangers. He desires to bring this man—this most gentle and extraordinary of man—peace.

It is only when Valjean’s nails managed to sink through the sheets into his palm, staining the pristine white with crimson blood, that Javert snaps out of his daze and rushes forward, intent on waking the man lost in his nightmare before he commits further harms upon himself.

Valjean’s eyes open, once again halting Javert in his tracks. He remains unmoving for some time, gazing up at the ceiling, or perhaps through it. He appears no more aware of his surrounding than he was in sleep.

“…Valjean?” Javert despises the hesitation in his voice, he who never hesitated even when confronting the very worst sort of criminals, but he is treading virgin soil here.

Seemingly still in a dream, Jean Valjean slowly turns toward the source of the sound without seeing it. His name means nothing to him. With that same deliberate, mechanical motion, he untangles himself from the sheets and rises from the bed. Javert dares not touch him, and dares not leave.

He hates this feeling, this goddamned feeling of complete and utter helplessness that he had once sworn he would never allow himself to feel again. Apparently allowing another into one’s heart renders one weak. Yet Javert cannot find it in himself to regret.

Valjean glides around the room, silent as a spectre and perhaps twice as pale, lighting all the candles and kindling the fireplace despite it being summer. He pauses a long moment before the two silver candlesticks of which significance Javert is now very much aware, having been regaled with the story one afternoon over tea. The room grows unbearably warm. At last Valjean appears satisfied.

The flames do not quite chase away all the shadows in the room, but it is enough.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive me. It is too late at night. I will read through it and fix any mistakes in the morning.

Valjean is no stranger to despair. For more than a decade, despair was all that he knew. Even that parody of laughter that was sometimes dragged from him in Toulon prison was filled to the brim with that darkest of all feelings, that complete absence of hope. Jean Valjean knows well the definition of despair.

He has not anticipated, however, that this old adversary would creep up on him so suddenly, and attempt to sink its claws into him once again, desperate for his company.

He had once lost his family, but time has sealed that wound with an ugly scar. He had recently lost Cosette, the light and joy of his old age, and this wound still aches and bleeds. Yet he has also gained a dear friend, whose presence, strange as it may seem, can inspire a wondrous warmth that melts all sorrows.

Now that scarred-over wound has been ruthlessly ripped open, and will be all the more difficult to heal. Endless days and perpetual misery had overshadowed his pain at the loss so many years ago in the hellhole that was a prison. It was easy enough to forget in a place that permitted no emotion except hatred and anger. But he has learned to love and live again. He is uncertain if the wound could close once more.

Sitting on his bed in a comfortable room in a comfortable house, it should not be so easy to recall that miserable hovel which served for a dwelling in his youth. Enfolded within such heat, the cold winter nights when they could not afford firewood should not be so vivid in his mind, enough to make him shiver from remembered chill. He should not be experiencing all the hollowness and pain of a stomach empty for far too long, the cramps and aches of a body worked to its limits, the lethargy of a heart that beats only for beating. He should not hear the hungry cries of seven little children, pitiful cries that resonate in his ears and in his soul. Pitiful children in a pitiless world.

Lost in his reveries, he does not notice the nightshirt-clad figure of Javert settle next to him on the bed, or the warm hand against his back that stills his trembling.

He cannot even remember their faces, these little ones that he had sacrificed his liberty to feed. It is but one more thing that time and prison has robbed from him. Perhaps it makes little enough difference. Even if, by some miracle of the Lord, they still live, they would have changed beyond recognition by now. He could have passed his youngest nephew in the streets and greeted him as any stranger.

His youngest nephew…the one who bears his name, the one most likely to yet be alive.

The one who had condemned him in his dream.

He cannot recall his face, so the boy had no face, only a great big cavern carved into a smooth pane of flesh to serve for a mouth. One would expect the sounds emerging from such a mouth to be horrific, demonic almost, yet in his dream the boy’s voice was human, and all the more terrible for it.

The faceless little child had said, “I hate you.” Then, “I will never forgive you.” That voice had been devoid of inflection. It held neither colour nor tone. Those crushing words were delivered as a statement of fact, as bland as his recollections of that boy.

The other six children, the eldest only nine at the time of his arrest, surrounded him and watched. Or perhaps not watched, for none had eyes. They slowly converged upon him, and pulled him to the ground, holding him in place as they squeezed the air from his lungs, in a mockery of the group hugs they used to greet him with. He was unable to offer resistance, the weight of his guilt alone enough to pin him down, for he knew well that this was their revenge.

This was their revenge towards him for abandoning them and leaving them to starve and die.

But that was only a dream.

In actuality, did they weep for him, or did they curse his name? Did they try to distance themselves from him, to erase all associations with “that thrice-damned convict?” He would not blame them if they had. It was only natural. By casting him out and denouncing his criminality, they could perhaps have saved some honour in the eyes of unforgiving neighbours. By repudiating him, they could perhaps have survived. If they raged against him loud enough, it may just be possible that others will see them as different from his ilk, and spare them some pity. Unlikely, yes, but possible.

He would forgive them.

Yet it cuts him to the bone to imagine.

His sacrifice had meant nothing to them. Nothing, except more pain and more misery. If the deprivation of his freedom for nineteen years was the price he had to pay to keep his sister’s family alive, he would not have objected. Yet in the end, it was all for nought. All for nought.

They would not have forgiven him.

Society has never been merciful. Jean Valjean knows, has been taught by a most striking, first-hand lesson, that all men are capable of good. He knows also that oftentimes they choose to ignore that inherent divine spark in favour of self-interest and self-preservation. He is not an idealist. He has suffered too much, seen and experienced too much, to ever be a true idealist. But he can live with the certainty that ever individual, under the right conditions and with sufficient inspiration, can commit truly selfless acts that shine as a beacon of hope upon the entire human race. And thus he has made it his life’s mission to bring about those conditions and pray that his kindness may inspire others to do good as Monseigneur Bienvenu’s had him.

But society as a whole, nameless, faceless, stripped of individual responsibility to self and to God, has never been particularly merciful. Especially towards those that have even once transgressed its bounds. The pressure for conformity exerts a crushing weight upon some of its more tender-hearted members, threatening them with similar ostracism should they dare to show mercy upon those the majority have rejected. It is a commonly held belief that criminality runs in the family; a disease, a weakness of character passed through the blood. His single act of theft had been enough to place his sister’s family— _his_ family—in that category of unfortunates frowned upon by society. The kindness that used to manifest in an occasional pitcher of milk or a forgiven debt would disappear.

He knows how hard it is to make an honest living with the weight of society’s disapproval crushing one’s back.

His attempt to save them had instead made their lives even more unbearable than before, not merely by depriving them of his meagre income, but by stripping them of integrity in the eyes of men, which may have consequently driven them to acts that would strip them of integrity in the eyes of God. He prays not. But desperation is a powerful master. This, too, he knows all too well.

…Mea culpa…

_For by that one thoughtless act, I had condemned them, and myself._


	3. Chapter 3

“A sou for your thoughts?”

Startled, Valjean glances up, only to see the usually dour and severe inspector gazing at him with something very much like concern. He summons up a smile for his friend. He is not very good at it.

“I fear that my thoughts are hardly worth that much, old fellow. In any case, it would do you little good to hear them.”

“They are worth that to me, and more.”

The words are whispered so softly that Valjean is almost certain he must have misheard.

He suddenly finds himself pinned with that piercing, hawk-like gaze so peculiar to this inspector of police, and the man’s next words are nowhere near as low or tender.

“Stop that. You look ugly.”

His smile falters, then falls completely. His lips opens, closes, then opens again, “Well, aren’t you a blunt one, Inspector Javert?”

He cannot suppress the briefest, completely unreasonable sting at the words, yet curiously the tightness around his chest has loosened, just enough for him to draw somewhat deeper breaths and stop feeling as if he may faint like the frailest maiden at any moment. He supposes he should thank the man for that. He does not particularly want to.

“I do not believe in your sugar-coated truths and merciful white lies, Valjean.”

The words are a challenge, but that, too, is an old debate; one that Valjean has no wish to reignite now. He would have indulged the man any other night, but not tonight. He does not take the bait.

Silence once again descends over the two men. It is not quite as comfortable as their usual quiet contemplations.

“Nevertheless, it would do you good to speak them.”

Valjean blinks at the non-sequitur. “Pardon?”

Javert waves a hand impatiently, as if he is asking the simplest thing in the world, and Valjean is an obtuse moron for not comprehending immediately. “Your thoughts, man. Your thoughts!”

“My…oh, I see.”

A very loud huff of breath tells Valjean exactly what his friend thinks of his slowness in seeing.

“Do you usually speak so out of the blue, Inspector?”

“Do not attempt to change the subject.”

Damn. The man knows him too well. He sends a silent prayer to God seeking forgiveness for his unintentional curse.

The steely glare of the man sitting next to him softens almost imperceptibly, but he knows Inspector Javert at least as well as Inspector Javert knows him. He cherishes each of these little details he has come to know of this strange man in their long acquaintance.

“Never be afraid to burden me with your thoughts, my friend. You have done much—too much—for me. Allow me to do this for you, at least.”

Well, he has certainly done much to hear the appellation of friend directed towards himself. The first time that word had slipped from those lips was by accident. Valjean carefully did not react, for fear of making the man self-conscious and withdraw back into his impenetrable shell. The second time was too deliberate, a test almost, and Valjean had responded with a smile of the purest pleasure. The third time was natural, as was every time after that. Valjean should be used to it now, but it still makes him inordinately happy to hear the most stone-hearted man he had ever known call him friend.

He is just about to reassure Javert with another smile when he recalls the inspector’s earlier words. The smile freezes half-formed, possibly uglier than before.

Did Cosette ever think of his smiles like that? He hopes not. Though he has never been vain, he does not know what he may do if his dearest Cosette believed him to be ugly. But it matters little.

Cosette will never see him again.

“You who have so often pushed me to unburden my heart to you, will you refuse to do the same? Is Saint Madeleine a hypocrite after all?” Javert sounds not a little irritated, and Valjean realizes to his chagrin that he has once more forgotten his friend’s presence in the room. That is by no means an easy thing to do, but tonight seems to be a night for exceptions. For one, the famous inspector is resting on his bed in nothing but a flimsy nightgown, inquiring after his private thoughts.

“I had a dream. That is all.” Valjean tries at a lighthearted tone. It feels very much inappropriate to the subject matter of his dream.

Javert snorts in disbelief, shaking his head as he replies, “Ah yes, but a simple dream! How foolish of me. I should have known.” His eyes pierce right into the core of Valjean’s soul, and his voice takes on a softer note, “Jean, I have never seen you shed a tear once in all your years in Toulon. However much old age may have weakened your endurance, do not ask me to believe that you are reduced to such a wretched state by a common dream.”

Valjean shakes his head gently, “I did not say it was a common dream.”

“You certainly implied it,” the inspector accuses. He continues before Valjean can find a suitable reply, “Do tell.”

The weary old man sighs, knowing that he shall not wiggle his way out of this tonight. He knows not whether to be thankful or annoyed, for Javert had learn all these mothering, overbearing ways from him, though of course the inspector is much more forward about it. As the man himself said, he does not believe in sugar-coating.

“I dreamed of my sister and her children.” He looks over to Javert for a reaction, but can find none. “The dream was rather fragmented and strange, but the theme was clear enough.”

Javert only gives him a minute nod, so he continues, “All I know of my lost family is that four years into my sentence, my sister and her youngest son were seen in Paris. She worked in a bindery while he attended school. As for the other six, I do not know. They may have starved. They may have died. They most likely have, in spite of my hopes and prayers. It has been many years since I dared to think about their fates. I pray for their souls every day, yet my mind has always shied away from true contemplation. I was afraid of my own imagination.” He chuckles, a dark, bitter sound, so unlike his customary gentle laughter, “It turns out that I was very right to be.”

At some point during his speech, Javert’s right hand has found his left and is gripping it tightly, anchoring him to the present before he can once again lose himself in past sorrows. He squeezes back slightly, a silent acknowledgement filled with wordless gratitude. Javert understands.

“I have failed them time and time again. If I had not stolen that loaf of bread, things might have been different. If I had tried harder to find them when I was in Montreuil-sur-Mer…If I have not only made discreet inquiries for fear of discovery, perhaps…perhaps I could have helped them. Perhaps I could have saved them. Perhaps I could have atoned for my sins. Perhaps.”

The more he turns over the possibility in his mind, the more he believes it true. Despite the fact that the youngest would have been older than twenty by the time of his release from prison, they could certainly have benefited from his wealth made in Montreuil. Even had they somehow survived their harsh childhood, they would have been far from well-off. If he had not been so concerned for his own safety, he might have been able to save them from a lifetime of struggling to survive.

He had not only damned them through his theft, but perhaps through his selfishness as well. One mistake upon another. One sin upon another. Is his life doomed to be a continuous chain of unpardonable sins?

The thought lies heavy in his heart, and he finds himself no longer able to remain upright. He rests his entire weight upon his uncomplaining friend, burying his face into the crook of Javert’s neck. He feels a pair of strong arms wrap around him, as if trying to shelter him from the world and his own thoughts.

And through his despair, he discovers a genuine smile.

It really is too bad that Javert cannot see his only beautiful smile this evening.

~ * ~

Javert listens wordlessly as Valjean, for the first time since his parole, talks about his true past. He is not a man with any particular skill in words, and he fears that whatever he may say will only make the situation worse. Yet his friend seems to find some comfort in his company, and though the reason eludes him, he is willing to provide that comfort for as long as may be necessary.

Listening to the most saintly man he has ever known condemn himself for hypothetical eventualities pains him in a way that he cannot quite explain, that he knows is not entirely rational but is unable to stop. He wants to tell him that they did not blame him, that he is not at fault for whatever may have happened to them, but he cannot. He cannot tell another what he himself does not know, and he cannot lie. Not even to reassure the man dearest to him in the entire world.

At last Valjean runs out of words and conjectures, and Javert ventures to speak.

“What brought this on? This sudden—” Javert does not quite know how to finish the sentence.

Valjean rubs his eyes wearily. “On our walk today—yesterday, now—you caught that little gamin trying to steal from me. He said it was for his sick mother. Do you recall what you said to him in reply?”

“…That she will die all the quicker if her child breaks her heart by getting himself arrested…Valjean, I—”

“Do not apologize, my friend. None of this is in any way your fault. In truth, I believe such a dream is long overdue. I have been doing my sister’s family a disservice by my refusal to think too deeply about them and come to terms with their possible fates. I thank you for your patience in bearing with my confused babbling, Javert.”

Valjean lifts his head from Javert’s shoulder, and Javert reads sincerity in that gaze. He does not say that Valjean is welcome. Such things are understood.

He thinks that it is perhaps time for him to excuse himself, but he is reluctant to leave Valjean in this state. Just as he is debating with himself, fearing that his offer may be misunderstood, the decision is made for him. It appears that Valjean is able to sense his thoughts, for he utters a single word that Javert cannot deny.

“Stay.”

He does.

They fall asleep wrapped in each other’s embrace, mutual warmth keeping old demons at bay.

**Author's Note:**

> C'est fini. Pardonne-moi mes péchés et accueille-moi dans ton royaume.


End file.
